Artists Bring Exquisite Corpse Animation to Life

The short animated film Quick and Dirty (posted above) is an exquisite corpse project created by 23 animators, one compositor and six sound designers/composers, most of whom are CalArts students, alumni or faculty members.

The title refers to the project’s directive to participants to work quickly and not “over-think what you are creating—letting the unconscious take over and make decisions.”

Curated by animator Maya Erdelyi (Film/Video MFA 12) and producer and animator Gina Kelly (Film/Video MFA 12), they recruited a number of filmmakers to create the exquisite corpse.

“We wanted to make an effort to mobilize artists to produce time-based works collectively,” Kelly says.

In July 2011, each animator was given a week to create 24-100 frames of animation after receiving the last frame of the previous artist’s sequence as a reference.

With the animation portion wrapping earlier this year, a separate exquisite corpse technique was employed for the sound and music for the film. The project’s sound curator and 24700 contributor Paul Fraser (Music MFA 11) enlisted five other sound artists to create two tracks—of sound design, composition or both—for the entire length of the film, sending only one track to the next participant for reference.

24700 is CalArts' online space dedicated to sharing news and work of the larger CalArts community from around the world. The blog captures stories of the exploration of new forms and expressions in the arts by our students, faculty, staff and alumni.

More and more operas are incorporating animation and other multimedia, including Experimental Animation Program faculty member Maureen Selwood's latest work at the Met.
The lauded artist recently … Continue »